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Author and Green Valley resident Mathias B. Freese says he aims to be crude, honest and politically incorrect because he wants to awaken people.

Freese's book, "The i Tetralogy," recently earned the 2007 Editor's Choice Award for historical fiction. The award was given by Allbooks Review. Each year a panel of 14 writers and editors reviews books submitted from North America, Britain and elsewhere. Last year, 355 books were submitted in nine categories, including 50 in historical fiction, where Freese was recognized. One award is given for each category.

Freese, 66, says the idea for the book hit him in an instant. In 1995, he was sitting in his car waiting for a friend when the words channeled into his mind. He grabbed for scraps of paper in his glove compartment, parking tickets, anything to get the words down on, he says.

The idea was the culmination of his life experiences as an American Jew encountering anti-Semitism, he says.

"I wrote the work of my life. And it only took 40 years," Freese says.

"It is a brilliant literary piece," says Shirley A. Roe, managing editor for Allbooks Reviews. " 'The i Tetralogy' is an in-depth look at the Holocaust that goes beyond any boundary ever presented, giving madness in clarity."

The book is divided into four sections, and each chronicles the events of the Holocaust through the viewpoints of three characters, with one character covered in two sections. The 'i' is a prisoner at an internment camp who loses his identity under the degradation of his Nazi tormentors.

"He is a lower case 'i' because he is diminished," Freese says. "He's not even a dot above the 'i'."

The second character is Gunther, a Nazi and former prison guard who moves to Mineola, N.Y., after World War II. His life in America is empty and he reminisces about the days when he tortured Jews, when his life had a purpose.

Gunther's son, Conrad offers readers the third point of view. Racked with guilt, he fantasizes about interviewing his father and searches for a way to reconcile the laments of his ancestry.

Freese says he wrote the book as a departure from what he calls the "sweetening of the Holocaust."

The author says books used to introduce the Holocaust to children, such as "The Diary of Anne Frank," do not deal with the true darkness of torture.

"I'd like to read the book 15 weeks after she's been in a death camp," he says.

Most people don't know the truth about the Holocaust, Freese says. Cannibalism was practiced in the death camps, he says.

He defends the graphic language used in his book because he says that it's his job as a writer to educate.

"I want to be in your face. I am a Nazi and so are you, because we as a species are capable of killing our fellow man," says Freese. "But we can't teach because it's too frightening. We can't tell a child that we're capable of genocide. That's scary."

Freese spent 25 years working as a psychotherapist in New York and during that time worked with Holocaust survivors. He says he used their testimony in the book.

"The research done for this book is beyond compare," says Roe.

Freese describes himself as having a wild sense of humor touched by sadness. He was heavily influenced by what he calls the romantic revolution of the 1960s.

However, "The only thing I smoked was salami," he says.

He used personal tragedy to write parts of the book. Freese's wife died in a car accident in 1999 and one of his daughters committed suicide.

Writing is a way of working on yourself, he says. Writing is a way to express yourself and see yourself, but many people don't want to look.

Freese says writing is like therapy: The point is to see.

"What you do after that is up to you," he says.